


If you stay right here tomorrow (you'll be fine)

by Azul_Bleu



Category: South Park
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:33:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azul_Bleu/pseuds/Azul_Bleu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been ten years since Stan has seen it, but he'd recognise that Jew-Fro anywhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If you stay right here tomorrow (you'll be fine)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hollycomb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/gifts).



When Stan turns the corner and starts to leave the coffee shop, overpriced Americano with half-and-half in hand, he finds himself freezing mid-step. Turning. Staring. 

It’s peeking out from behind a newspaper, a legit newspaper that Stan didn’t think papers even bothered printing anymore, but Stan would know that hair anywhere. He hasn’t seen that shade of red in over a decade, but he knows, down to his bones, whose it is.

“Kyle?” 

The newspaper shivers suddenly, and then it’s folding down and Stan can see he was right. Kyle Broflovski stares back at him through trendy, frameless glasses. Stan is sure their expressions match: slack jaw, goggle-eyed, wondering if it could possibly be true. 

“Stan?” Kyle finally blurts, laying the paper down and standing. He shifts nervously, wiping his hands on his pants (woollen slacks, nice but not that well-fitted) before offering a hand to shake. “God, it’s been – how long has it been?”

Stan grabs his hand and they shake. It’s weird. Stan is suited up for a meeting that afternoon, and he feels like an imposter in front of Kyle, who saw him through his vegan-only clothing phase, his 90’s grunge-revival phase, his painful ironic hipster phase. Kyle has the hair, but it’s shorter and tamer and everything else is different. He’s wearing a sweater-vest, for crying out loud, and there’s a shiny black briefcase by his shiny black shoes. They look like strangers to themselves. Still, Stan feels the phantom press of a poofball hat against his forehead and the bulk of a parka in his movement. “Not since you came here for Grad school. Eleven years this Thanksgiving, I guess. Wow. Who’d have thought?”

Kyle hums and pets his hands against his pants again. Stan tenses his fingers against his coffee and the file he’s carrying. 

“Wanna sit?” Kyle asks and then looks awkward, like it’s exploded out of him without his prior consent. 

Stan smiles stiffly. “Sure.” Kyle bundles the newspaper onto a nearby table and Stan sets his file and coffee down, then picks the cup up again to have something to occupy his hands. 

They stay silent for a long moment, both observing the other. Kyle looks good for thirty-three, Stan thinks. Better than him, for sure, but alcohol will do that to you, even after you stop. Capillaries don’t unburst, after all. Kyle is slender and looks healthy, clear skinned and straight backed. Still, there are lines around Kyle’s eyes, dug deep from smiling and laughing at things years removed from South Park, a familiar furrow in his brow from where he would always scowl when things didn’t go his way. Stan thinks back to when last he saw that frown, and he thinks it was the summer after their freshman college year, when he didn’t want to drive to Denver to try out their new fake IDs. _Can’t you get drunk in the comfort of your own home, Stan?_ he’d asked, so snottily, and Stan hadn’t been able to explain the pull back then, the thirst that ached in the depths of his chest.

“So. How’s Jennifer? It was Jennifer, right?” Kyle asks at length, adjusting his glasses. 

Stan takes a sip to buy himself a second. “Oh, we divorced. A few years ago. The kids mostly live with her, now.”

Kyle grimaces. “Oh, sorry to hear it, dude.”

The dude slips out, Stan is sure of it, but suddenly the tension in his shoulders melts off. “Yeah, thanks. How about you? Kenny mentioned you and Mitchell split up last year.”

Kyle sighs. “That asshole. God, I can’t believe I wasted seven years on him.”

“Hey, at least you didn’t have kids,” Stan says, and he can hear the bitterness. Takes a drink of coffee to wash it down. 

“That was the whole problem,” Kyle says. 

“Oh, really?” says Stan. “Because you never wanted any, you know, back in the day.”

Kyle shrugs. “Changed my mind, and Mitchell said he’d go with it, and then at the last fucking second he pulled the plug on me, and you can forget it with a record like that with adoption agencies.” 

Stan winces. “Sounds rough, dude.”

“Yeah. Turns out he was cheating on me with his secretary, anyway. Talk about a cliché. I felt like I was in some kind of pathetic Jewish telenovela.” 

Stan barks out a laugh and Kyle smiles, that slightly vicious grin that Stan remembers. “But you’re working, right? Where does a person go with a degree in Russian Lit, career wise?” 

Kyle rolls his eyes. “Teaching. Where else?”

“Hey, I warned you, dude.”

Kyle narrows his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, Mister Finance. How’d that work out for you in oh-eight, anyway?” he asks. 

“Better than most,” Stan says with a shrug. “Our business was pretty unexposed to derivatives, wonder of wonders.”

“Stop looking so smug,” Kyle teases. “You know that was all you, with your deep and abiding suspicion of the man. This is the Margararita-ville thing all over again.” 

“Kyle, you didn’t see that ‘dead chicken of fortune’ thing. I stand by my mistrust of the Fed.”

“Well, just remember who sacrificed his credit score to get your dad to stop wearing a sheet.”

“Oh god, don’t remind me. Thank Christ he lives with Shelley, I honestly think I’d have thrown him under a bus by now.”

Kyle shifts on his seat, scratches his stubble with an audible rasp. “He took your mom’s death hard.”

“Yeah,” Stan says, looking down at the table. “He’s never been quite… right, since. Not that he was ever – well, it’s sucked.”

Kyle nods. “So what brings you to Boston?” 

Stan fiddles with his empty coffee cup. “I’m looking to relocate, actually. Jen and the girls are down in Connecticut, so this is that much closer than Denver. People keep telling me it’s cold here.”

Kyle laughs, mouth open and head thrown back. Stan’s breath stops for a second at the kick of familiarity, the memory of hundreds upon hundreds of moments just like this, of talking and laughing and just _being_ without worrying what Kyle would think of him, because they were Super Best Friends and nothing would ever change that.

Nothing, apparently, except distance and lack of time, growing up and growing apart. 

Kyle is shaking his head with an exasperated smile. “I know. When I first came, everyone was the same. Mountain kid, here! You think you know cold? This is a spring day in South Park!”

Stan brays out a laugh that surprises him. “Oh god, you’re one of those people, aren’t you? Uphill both ways to school with no shoes?”

“Hey, I had to deal with the fatass. That was way worse,” Kyle says with a pointed finger.

“We, Kyle, _we_ had to deal with the fatass.”

Kyle scoffs. “In between your poetry phases slash benders slash sessions with Kenny, you mean?”

Stan chuckles. “I seem to recall plenty of sessions with you there, too. One particularly memorable day with Karen’s Easy-Bake Oven comes to mind.”

“Dude! We swore never to talk about that!”

“It’s been nearly twenty years, I think the moratorium can be lifted.”

They both fall silent at that. Twenty years since that time in Kenny’s room, stoned out of their minds and sure that they were immortal. More than ten since they’d talked. But sitting here, it felt like a day. Like Kyle had just gone home for the night and here he was, knocking on Stan’s front door in his old green ushanka and a wicked glint in his eye.

“This is nice, dude,” Stan says, and Kyle snickers. Stan shoots him a glare. “You know what I mean.”

Kyle smirks, but he tilts his head in the way that Stan knows means he agrees. “So when do you know? If you’re moving here?”

Stan thinks he knows now, transfer or not. “Next week,” is what he says.

Kyle pulls out his wallet. “Here’s my card. I’m at the university most days, so if you’re… you know, staying, gimme a call. If you wanna hang out.”

Stan fingers the card, traces Kyle’s name, and wonders how he spent so long without this. “Alright. I’ll call you. We’ll get dinner.”

Kyle grins, and he looks ten years old again. “Veal?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Ryan Adams' "Come Home"


End file.
